


Hit Refresh

by 26stars



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash February 2017, Season 1, ambiguous ending, but this has been a month of months and this has been sitting in my folder forever, idk i wanted to contribute to femslash february, idk the motel scenes always get me, post Nothing Personal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 01:59:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9856877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: When May gets back to the team after finding out the truth, she has a few tough conversations to have. Some of them don't go the way she expected.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, this has been sitting in my fic folder for...a while.   
> ~~And boy does a year make a difference in my writing style...~~
> 
> Some of you may recognize the opening scene--I did post it over a year ago but took it down. Originally, I wanted it to evolve into a longer story, but I took it down after only posting the opening scene bc I realized I didn't really want to commit to a long st ory that started here. I came back to it this week felt like Femslash February was as good a time as any to throw the whole story out there. I know it's an ambiguous ending, but I can't really promise to come back and tell more until my other ~~stupid-long~~ fic is done (some of May and Coulson's dialogue overlaps with a scene in there too).

They’re sitting on opposite sides of the room—he’s sitting on the foot of one of the beds; she’s sitting in one of the chairs at the table by the window, the closed laptop at her elbow, the unearthed USB still plugged into it. There is simultaneously everything and nothing to say.

Being betrayed by a team member, or even an old friend, is one thing that no person should ever have to face. Having it happen more than once in a single week? Hell.

Finding out that you, in fact, are the villain you’ve been fearing?

Unimaginable.

So she’s not surprised that when Coulson finally speaks, it has nothing to do with the video they both just watched.

“How long ago did you see Hill?” He’s not looking at her, just staring into the half-dark ahead of him.

May leans back in her chair, feeling the ache in her shoulder muscles. Lifting thirty-six cubic feet of dirt isn’t a workout she’s interested in ever repeating. Washington DC already feels like a lifetime ago. “About 48 hours.”

Coulson nods once. “She was just here, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. She flipped me the bird when she passed my car in the parking lot.”

Coulson huffs out a small laugh. “I’ve missed her.”

May smiles to herself. “Me too.”

She hurries to the next question in order to not give the ache in her chest a door to wedge its foot in.

“Have you talked to anyone else?”

“Protocol is to stay dark.”

“No SHIELD to enforce protocol now.”

Coulson finally looks over at her with a tired, halfhearted attempt at a smile. “Hill said Romanoff’s with Rogers somewhere. Barton’s stayed dark. Hill also said she’s already received a couple of threads that she’ll pass on later—once there’s something to tie them onto again. Right now…” He trails off with a sigh. “…it feels a little like it’s just us.”

May stretches her legs out in front of her and sighs too, staring down at her muddy boots. She considers taking them off but leaves them on—they might need to run suddenly again.

A week ago they had an organization. A boss. A mission. Now?

Ashes to sift through.

“So what happened?” she asks, folding her arms across her chest. “Between me leaving and now.”

Coulson finally turns to face her, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his shoulders slump. “Ward came back because Skye had encrypted the flashdrive, and Garrett’s men couldn’t get into it. He had wiped the security cameras in the Providence base, but the hangar feed caught him and Skye leaving together in the Bus. She had left a message scraped in one of the picture screens in a bathroom, probably after she had found Koenig’s body…which Simmons had the misfortune of finding herself.”

May’s hand flexes into a loose fist behind her elbow. “Where did you find them?”

“Hill brought Colonel Talbot and his men to the base, which is its own story, then she helped us to pursue Ward and Skye to LA, where Skye had tipped off the police to come and arrest them both. Since that was never going to work out, we ended up in a face-off at the airstrip where they’d left the Bus. I climbed in through the wheel well while Hill distracted him. Ward had put her in the Cage by the time I slipped into the cabin. Deathlok was there too, though, so we made a fast exit with Lola.”

May straightens up. “At 35,000 feet?” she asks incredulously.

He lifts his head and smiles at her. “I won’t be doing it again.” This smile feels more genuine, and she feels the knot in her chest loosen slightly.

“And after that?”

His smile fades, and he sighs as he stares down at the carpet again. “There’s not really anything else to add. Hill picked us up when we landed and got everybody here. I think Lola’s going to live on a farm until further notice. Hill tried to convince me to let everyone go their separate ways. But we’re all still here, so…”

The silence fills in the unspoken question.

_Now what?_

May unfolds her arms and looks down at her hands, at the broken blisters and deep lines filled with dirt she couldn’t scrub out.

“I can’t believe he has my plane,” she mutters.

“We’ll get it back.”

_And you’ll get a chance to tell him how you feel._

They lapse into a weary silence. May taps her foot softly against the leg of the table to keep herself awake, picking at the dirt under her nails.

“How are the others doing?”

_Are the kids all right?_

Coulson sighs. “Fitzsimmons are all business—Fitz probably took the truth about Ward the hardest. Tripp is definitely upset, ready to do something, but mostly just glad he’s with us now.”

“And Skye?”

“Like everyone else-she’s dealing in her own way. To me, it looks like her way is with Internet and no appetite.”

May stares his direction again.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Coulson looks over at her, and she wills him not to make her say it. He doesn’t.

“He didn’t hurt her, May.”

Internally May breathes a sigh of relief, looking away again.

“Then how did he make her unlock the drive?”

“He couldn’t. So Deathlok snapped a cardiac arrester on him and gave Skye ten seconds to tell the truth before Ward died.”

May stares straight ahead, absorbing this fact.

_After everything that’s happened…_

“She asked about you, by the way.”

May looks over at him, her brow quirked.

“You didn’t tell her you were leaving—so when she found Koenig, I think she assumed you were dead too.”

May closes her eyes slowly. “Oh.”

“I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you,” he says in a voice that tells her that he won’t let her dodge that face-to-face tomorrow. It’s a weak comfort, but she appreciates the effort this time.

“I’ll be glad to see all of them.”

Coulson stands, untucking his shirt and beginning to unbutton it. “Well, dawn will come around soon enough. I assume we’ll all congregate for breakfast tacos.”

May almost smiles as she props her feet on the other chair and leans back in her seat. “Twenty years of missions, and that might be a first.”

Coulson has moved over to the bathroom door, flicking on the white fluorescent light inside. “I’m going to shower. You should sleep.” This time, it feels more like a request than like orders.

She doesn’t move from her chair, though. “Soon enough.”

She catches a glimpse of another sad smile before he reaches over and turns of the lamp. When he closes the bathroom door, she’s left alone in darkness.

~~~

She’s in the exact same spot when she wakes up, but this time, light is bleeding through the window over her shoulder. Coulson is brushing his teeth at the sink and catches sight of her movement in the mirror.

“Seven thirty,” he says around his toothbrush as he watches her grope for her phone to check the time. “You’ve let yourself go, Mel.”

She guesses the sum total of sleep hours she’s had in the last four days is still a single-digit amount, so she refuses to be embarrassed.

She arches her back and stretches, her spine crunching like bubble wrap as she twists it gently out ( _Getting too old to be sleeping in chairs like that…_ ). Her knees complain as she stands ( _Too old to be digging up an entire grave by yourself…_ ) _,_ sighing around the rotten taste left in her mouth.

“Can I borrow that toothbrush when you’re done?” she mumbles as she makes her way slowly towards him, dragging a hand through her hair. Coulson makes a disgusted face at her, his brow wrinkling.

“What happened to your duffel?” he asks before rinsing his mouth and spitting into the sink.

“It’s still in the car,” she sighs, taking the toothbrush as he passes it over and rinsing it well.

“I guess I never did ask how you got here from Canada, did I?” her friend asks, wiping his mouth on one of the towels and meeting her eyes in the mirror.

“My mother,” she says simply, reapplying toothpaste to the brush and shoving it in her mouth so that he knows not to ask any follow-up questions.

“I sent Trip for breakfast,” Coulson says, crossing to the room and slipping a shirt over his shoulders. “He should be back soon.”

“Do we have something to go off of today?” May asks around the toothbrush. “Any plan at all?”

“Consolidation of information and assets is step one. We’ll get the group together around a whiteboard or something and start laying everything out. There are connections everywhere, we just need to know where they all originate.” He puts a tie around his neck, starts to tie it, and then seems to change his mind, tossing it back in his bag.

May spits into the sink and rinses the brush. “And then what? The six of us are just going to go in and take out HYDRA?”

She splashes water on her face and rubs it off with a towel.

“We’re going to cut off at least one head. One head that’s finished talking if I have anything to say about it.”

A knock on the door ends the conversation. She watches him check through the peephole before opening it.

“Morning, sir,” she hears Simmons chirp from the other side. “I heard you sent Trip for food but I wanted to offer tea-I may or may not have stolen some from the Providence base before we left it.”

“Did you steal a kettle, too, Simmons?” Coulson responds, sounding impressed.

“Of course not,” the girl responds, sounding scandalized. “That was Fitz.”

“You happen to have a third cup?” May asks, joining him at the door. Simmons jumps within her skin but manages not to spill a drop of tea, a grin immediately breaking across her face. “May! Uh, here, take mine!”

She offers the cup, and though May knows she should turn it down, the offer of caffeine that isn’t coffee is too appealing to pass up.

“Thank you,” she says, carefully taking the cup and stepping out into the morning air with the scientist.

“How did you find us?” the girl asks, her eyes bright.

Not _Where did you go?_ Not _Why did you leave?_ Not _Why did you come back?_

And the absence of those question makes May’s chest go tight with gratitude, even if it goes unspoken.

It’s still early spring, so the air is refreshingly wet and cool against her skin as Simmons immediately begins peppering her with questions, chatter that is not necessarily unwelcome as May drinks her tea and lets the morning soak into her. Fitz emerges at the sound of Simmons’s excited chatter, and Trip comes into the pool area with a heavy-looking paper bag and a big smile not long after.

“Welcome back, Agent May,” he says diplomatically as he starts sorting out foil-wrapped items on one of the patio tables, and the five of them circle in chairs over the meal. Jemma moves over to one of the doors and knocks, tipping her ear towards the door and calling in.

“Skye! Breakfast!”

Irrationally, May feels her heartbeat pick up. Coulson briefly meets her eyes across the table but says nothing, and she can tell the others are all pretending they didn't notice.

“Now you say you got a Stark Industries jet off of Maria Hill,” Trip says casually, “and that’s how you got to LA. You happen to park it nearby?”

May raises an eyebrow at him.

“You never drive a stolen car,” she answers as she hears a door open at her four o’clock. “You steal a different one.”

Skye is three steps out her door before she seems to register May’s voice. She freezes mid-step and turns her had sharply towards their table, her eyes immediately zeroing in on May. There is a taut silence as everyone else seems to wait for her reaction.

At first, something like relief washes over Skye’s features, but it almost immediately is overtaken by something else—something red and boiling. She opens her mouth, pulling in a shallow breath like she’s about to speak, but in the end, she doesn’t say a word. She just turns on her heel and strides back into her room, slamming the door so hard that the glass rattles in the window frame.

“Well, that could have been worse,” Simmons says lightly, crumpling their foil wrappers loudly in an attempt to dispel the awkward silence that follows.

“You have your room key, Simmons?” May asks pointedly, holding out her hand.

“I don’t think you should-”

“Agent Simmons.”

The scientist blushes and hands over her key without another word.

“Maybe you could give her a minute?” Coulson cautions quietly from his seat as May stands, making her way around the pool.

May doesn’t bother explaining herself to him. She never has.

“Whatever happens, don’t interrupt-not even if you hear her breaking things.”

“Your show, May,” he concedes, and she doesn’t look back as she sticks the key in the lock.

~~~

She doesn’t knock on the door until she already has it open, spilling light into the room. She takes it as a good sign that Skye didn’t put the chain on the door.

“Skye, do you mind if I come in?”

The girl is cross-legged on the far bed, laptop open in front of a pile of all of their phones, where it looks like she is reprogramming them. She doesn’t even acknowledge May—doesn’t say a word—so May steps into the room and shuts the door behind her, throwing everything into half-hearted darkness again.

She can feel the emotion radiating off the girl even as she maintains her silence, punching commands into one of the phones. May’s not intimidated, though. This is her game, and as far as the people in this room are concerned, she’s the expert.

She tosses the card key on the small table by the window, the unspoken possession of the space around her. She unzips her jacket and takes a step forward.

“Some week, huh?”

Predictably, Skye can’t keep her mouth shut for long.

“You've got a lot of nerve walking back in here without an apology,” Skye bites out, still staring down at the phone in her hand.

As opening parries go, it’s a bold one. May lets her brow lift in surprise.

“For what, exactly?”

Skye moves suddenly, launching the phone across the room at May, who turns quickly to the side to avoid it, letting the object _thunk_ heavily into the door behind her. She barely hears it clattering to the floor though—Skye's voice drowns it out.

“I thought you were _dead_ , May!” the girl shouts. Her blank expression splinters; pain, anger, and fear vie for center stage as Skye stares May down for a long, suspended instant before slamming her hands down against the mattress and staggering to her feet.

The words come out fast, riding on one loud, continuous thread as she moves across the small room towards May.

“I thought he had gotten you by surprise, just like Koenig, and gotten one more obstacle out of his way!”

She sends a plastic wastebasket flying towards May with a sloppy kick, and two more steps bring her right inside May’s personal space.

“I thought you were stuffed in some other closet shelf with a bullet in your brain, left for the rest of our team to find when they got back!”

She raises her fist, and May doesn’t move, nor does she flinch as Skye brings it down against the door just beside May’s ear. She stands still as a statue, holding Skye’s jagged gaze steadily.

_She doesn’t really want to hurt; she just wants to be heard._

“Skye.”

May can see that the girl’s pain is condensing now. Skye’s fist against the door shifts and falls to May’s shoulder, drags down to yank halfheartedly at the collar of her jacket. Skye’s gaze falls to the handful of leather, tears stubbornly clinging to her lashes as her voice dissolves into a whimper.

“ _He_ told me you had left, and I believed him because I didn't have any reason not to. We were a job to you, and your job was done. And then I found Koenig with his throat ripped open, and-“

May finally moves, reaching up to gently cover the girl’s hand with her own, and Skye looks up at her, repeating the two words that were the very core of all the pain.

“But you weren’t dead. You _left_. You _left_. And I can’t be mad at him for that. I can only be mad at you.”

_You weren't supposed to be like every other person I've cared about._

_You weren’t supposed to_ leave me _._

May’s fingers wrap around Skye’s, gently loosening her grip on the fabric, until May can interlace their fingers and bring their hands palm-to-palm between their chests. There really isn’t much space left between them, so the back of her hand more or less rests against her heart. She raises her other hand and lays it gently on Skye’s shoulder, a silent petition for her to stay right where she is.

“You’re right,” she says softly, holding the girl’s gaze solemnly. “You’re right. And I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said ‘for what’, like I didn't think there was anything to apologize for. I should have said ‘for which part.’”

She moves her hand from Skye’s shoulder to carefully (slowly) reach up and brush her fingertips over the girl’s cheek, smearing the few tears gently away, a gesture that seems visibly disarming to Skye.

“I know I messed up,” May continues, attempting to keep her voice solemn. “I left, and I didn’t tell you when or why. I didn’t know I was leaving you with a murderous traitor, but that’s what happened, and that’s on me. And I’m sorry.”

Skye bites her lip, blinking out a few more tears, and looks down, nodding in silent acceptance.

“I know. I know you didn’t know. I just—” Skye trails off, looking away as she quickly wipes her own tears with the hand not wrapped inside May’s own. When May speaks again though, Skye’s gaze returns to hers.

“I wish I could promise you it will never happen again,” May says, “but the last few years for me are kind of defined by broken vows. I won’t promise anything about the future, but…I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.”

Skye’s lips turn into the smallest of smiles, and she nods once.

“Good.”

And before May knows what’s happening, Skye leans in and kisses her soundly on the lips.

More than a little stunned, May doesn’t react at all—doesn’t pull or push—and when Skye draws back only a sustained second later, she maintains her grip on the girl’s shoulder and hand to keep her from running away.

“What was that?” she says lightly, trying not to sound threatening.

Skye already looks embarrassed as she shrugs and glances away. “I’m sorry, that was stupid. It’s just…as far as I know, the last person either of us kissed was Grant Ward, and… I think we both needed to clear that history.”

Surprised, May actually scoffs out a suggestion of a laugh. “Well, I can’t disagree with that.”

But she knows that’s not all that was. She hasn’t missed the way the girl has been watching her for a while now.

That kiss was a test. For both of them. Skye saw an opportunity and took it.

_Clever girl._

“Sorry,” Skye repeats.

May feels her leaning away, trying to step back and put distance between them, between herself and this moment, so she lets her, dropping her hands and letting Skye take a few steps back. The girl immediately turns away and busies herself by straightening the room again, picking up the wastebasket and returning it to its place near the nightstand. May fishes the launched phone from the floor and brings it over to the bed, where Skye sits down again with her pile of technology.

“Do you still have your SHIELD phone?” she asks, avoiding her eyes as she takes the phone from May’s hand, pulling one leg beneath herself as she turns back to her laptop. “If so, give it to me and I’ll reset it.”

May stands there and considers answering. She considers pulling the phone out of her pocket, dropping it on the bed, and leaving without saying anything else. But she doesn’t.

“Skye.” She shifts a tiny bit closer to the bed, one knee brushing against Skye’s leg. “I didn’t say I minded.”

Skye finally looks up at her, her eyes going wide for a half second before a skeptical expression drops in front of it.

“May, I know I shouldn’t have done that and I promise you don’t have to say that just save my pride—”

May leans down and kisses her.

It’s not a good angle, and May has to lean on Skye’s shoulder in order to not tip them both backwards on the bed. Her other hand cradles the girl’s cheek gently, feeling the immediate jump in temperature of her skin, the pulse hammering beneath her fingertips…but Skye is frozen beneath her, just as May had been when the situation was reversed, not responding in any direction.

_From surprise? Or fear? Or something else…_

May pulls back when the kiss lasts just barely longer than the last one, straightening up until she’s again standing over the girl and looking down into her bewildered expression, one hand still resting on her shoulder.

“I’m going to borrow your shower,” May says slowly, holding Skye’s gaze. “And if I come back out and find you gone, then I promise I will never bring this up and we will both pretend like this never happened. If, however, I come back out and you’re still here…” She shifts the hand on Skye’s shoulder until her fingertips just brush the skin above the girl’s collar, “…then I’ll let you tell me what you want to do next.”

She backs away without waiting to watch Skye’s reaction, pausing in the bathroom doorway only to kick off her muddy boots.

“You’ll have at least ten minutes to decide,” she says over her shoulder.

Then she shuts and locks the door behind her.


End file.
